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Monday, 26 October 2015

Beware of Greeks bearing Gifts

Always beware of Greeks bearing gifts.After England’s humiliating group stage exit
there have been a lot of siren voices in the media, usually with a southern
hemisphere or Celtic accent, laying the blame on the clubs; too many foreigners
they say, you need central contracts they reckon.

So after all those great rugby minds declared that the move
would be a huge success and that it would revolutionise Italian rugby has it
work? Have results improved at either a club or national level?

6N record excluding 2000&2001

In a word no.As this
revolution was all down to improving the national side let’s look there first.Italy’s record in the 6 Nations shows no discernible
improvement. They entered the tournament
in 2000 and since then the average score in their games has been a 14-32 defeat,
in the old era of the Super 10 the average score was 15-33 and in the new era
of the Pro 12 it is 13-29.In the first
two years of the 6 Nations Italy’s attack was the best it has ever been and
their defence the worst, remove those two years, see graphic right, and the average scores are
practically identical.

At a club level the story is even worse.Whilst the national team has improved, even
if only slightly, the clubs have gotten worse.Super 10 sides in the old Heineken Cup lost on average 16-39, since the
move to the Pro 12 that has become 12-36.As the graphic left shows when taken to 2 decimal places the difference is
practically non-existent.

How can this be? Italy have taken all the prescribed
remedies, they’ve got central contracts, they’ve condensed their league to 2
regional sides, killing off domestic rugby in the process and there are barely
any foreigners left playing in Italy, only 13 this weekend.

The problem is that all these are fiddling around the
side.Italy have not improved their
player pool.Yes they have good young
players, our own Riccardo Brugnara and Tiziano Pasquali among them, but Italy
has always produced good players it needs to produce more really top end ones
capable of dominating internationally.Sacking foreigners and killing domestic rugby hasn’t helped that.And it won’t help in England either.

We must resist these siren voices drawing us to the
rocks.Hansen, Thomas and Pichot do not
really care about England and Jeff Probyn’s agenda of destroying independent clubs
has been clear for some time.England
rugby will only improve as the player pool and, crucially, coaching of the
senior side improves.